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The local Chevrolet dealer in the big town of Benson went under. Actually a really big dealer with dealer ships all over including two very big motor home dealer ships. Went down due to poor investments. Anyway the local Ford dealer buys up the Chevy dealership and is now selling Chevy's off of the Ford lot. I never thought I would see that.
Jim,
That isn't the end of it. I never would have thought I'd see GM on the brink, either. Should know in a week whether Chrysler will file Ch 11. What grinds me is that the Obama administration says that in the Ch 11 filing, the UAW's pensions and health care benefits will be protected. Heck that's a BIG drain on the company. I work for an auto supplier (lot of our work is with Chrysler) and I'm sure Obama isn't going to protect my job and I get NO pension and NO retiree health benefits. It's BS that the lavish UAW benefits will be protected by this. I guess Obama doesn't care if everyone else gets hurt as long as the Union that supports him doesn't get touched. I guess when he says he's for the working man, he only means it if you're in the UAW.
The maddening thing is that you have political hacks who have no knowledge of the car industry telling the automakers what they should do. They think with a stroke of their pens they can raise CAFE standards. It costs MONEY to develop the mass production technology to achieve those fuel economy increases. If they're so smart, let's see them work in an auto lab to get more energy out of a gallon of gasoline.
Also, the "green energy" push is NOT going to be our savior. That's just appeasement to the Sierra Club and other tree huggers. This hype that we could have up to 30% of our energy from Wind in a few decades doesn't help put food on the table for an unemployed energy worker in Colorado because the government is curtailing oil exploration there. Want to get off Coal and Oil? Build nuclear power plants. That's a proven technology but the leaders in our country have no backbone to let that happen.
I'm all for alternative fuel cars. But the economics aren't there. The Chevy Volt will cost about $40k for a compact car that normally costs under $20k. So anyone who buys one will pay at least a $20k premium to be "green". I can buy a lot of gas for $20k even at $4/gallon. That would be 5000 gallons and at 25mpg, break even would be 125k miles. With gas currently under $2, break even doubles to 250k miles.
Sorry for the rant, but these are unprecedented times. We need a strong leader with some cojones to stand up to the challenges and instead, we've got a guy bowing to the Saudis, high-fiving with Chavez and worrying more about some terrorist getting waterboarded and whether he'll p*ss off the unions.
He wants to be a "likable" president, loved by all. That's NOT what we need. Not trying to be political but the actions coming out of Washington sure don't make sense.
We should be loosening govt and environmental regulations to put people back to work in industries we KNOW we have the technology for. Again, sorry for the rant.
[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The bammy's biggest weakness is that he wants everyone to LIKE him (a huge mistake) so he promises everything to everybody. There is so much that is screwed up now that it will take the next three administrations to repair the damage he has done in just the first 100 days. [img]/forums/images/icons/frown.gif[/img]
Dave,
Agree 100%. The way they're trying to craft the GM "restructuring" is the most unfair thing imaginable. Obama is deathly afraid of alienating the UAW so he's GUARANTEEING their pensions and LIFETIME health care. If they let GM & Chrysler go into bankruptcy, the judge would rip up the UAW contracts and eveyone would suffer the same. The way it is right now, the bondholders, shareholders, suppliers, dealers ALL will get shafted BIG TIME but the UAW pensions and bennies WILL be protected. Explain how that is fair to the janitor down at the Pontiac dealership who will be out on the streets with no pension and no health care.